Given the discussion in the main ACF Nats thread about answers that have or haven't come up before, I figured I would make a post here to benefit people who, like me until editing regionals, don't know how to search the Stanford archive. It's ridiculously simple, and I assume most of the "higher ups" on the board know, but I guess it isn't inherently obvious to many, or at least it wasn't to me... Anyway, all you have to do in the Google search box is:

"answer i'm looking for" site:quizbowl.stanford.edu

There is also Jerry's Database, and at least one other one I can't remember. There should be a decent amount of overlap, but there are some thing's on Jerry's that aren't on Stanford, and obviously lots of stuff on Stanford not on Jerry's.

You can also search for text within documents within certain folders, if you have a large archive of .docs and .rtfs. In older versions of Windows, you need to go to Advanced Search Options, but in Vista it automatically searches text within documents.

theMoMA wrote:You can also search for text within documents within certain folders, if you have a large archive of .docs and .rtfs. In older versions of Windows, you need to go to Advanced Search Options, but in Vista it automatically searches text within documents.

theMoMA wrote:You can also search for text within documents within certain folders, if you have a large archive of .docs and .rtfs. In older versions of Windows, you need to go to Advanced Search Options, but in Vista it automatically searches text within documents.

The other archive to search, which has fewer but much higher quality packets (generally speaking) is the Collegiate Quiz Bowl Packet Archive. In particular, this one has all former ACF tournaments, whereas Stanford only has a couple of random ones.

ChrisK.MIT wrote:The other archive to search, which has fewer but much higher quality packets (generally speaking) is the Collegiate Quiz Bowl Packet Archive. In particular, this one has all former ACF tournaments, whereas Stanford only has a couple of random ones.

Yeah, that's the other one I was thinking of. I thought more ACF sets were on Stanford than apparently there are. Perhaps this could be remedied?

Well, considering that the Stanford Archive has yet to upload this year's Stanford Cardinal Classic despite saying they submitted it months ago, I'm not holding my breath for whoever manages that part of their site to remedy that.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

Yeah, the Stanford Archive is pretty sub-optimal when it comes to packet coverage. Ideally, what you should do is just get a comprehensive collection of packets on your hard drive and search that (whether by Google Desktop or other method) - easier said than done, sure. It'd be perfectly easy if/when anyone ever gets a reasonably comprehensive collection of, let's say, all good post-2003 packets up in one spot.

Ryan Westbrook, no affiliation whatsoever.

I am pure energy...and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!

Left here since birth...forgotten in the river of time...I've had an eternity to...ponder the meaning of things...and now I have an answer!

I have no control over the Stanford Archive myself, but it looks like we got some fresh blood in the club to (finally) start updating it again. Hopefully we can start filling the gaps in it by putting all the decent tournaments of the past five years on it. Matt brought up one good point: should we put all the ACF tournaments on the Stanford archive? Personally, I think it's a great idea, because right now, whenever I'm searching packets for answers, I have to do two searches, one for the Stanford archive, and one for the ACF packets. Consolidating all the packets into one spot seems like a great goal. However, I threw around the idea of adding the ACF archive at practice tonight, and some people seemed to think it was pointless. What do people think?

theMoMA wrote:You can also search for text within documents within certain folders, if you have a large archive of .docs and .rtfs. In older versions of Windows, you need to go to Advanced Search Options, but in Vista it automatically searches text within documents.

If you've got a Mac running Tiger or Leopard, Spotlight does this as well, though the command line tool mdfind gives you a bit more power over the search.

Deesy Does It wrote:Well, considering that the Stanford Archive has yet to upload this year's Stanford Cardinal Classic despite saying they submitted it months ago, I'm not holding my breath for whoever manages that part of their site to remedy that.

Yeah, about that... Currently, all packets get sent to Eric Smith, who's in charge of posting them to the archive. The problem with this set up is that it only gets updated whenever Eric gets to it, which clearly hasn't been much time in the past two months. Only two other people have webmaster priviliges, Jason Ma and myself, but only very recently has Eric allowed us to post packets. He says he'll forward us some stuff packets he's received so we can post them ourselves, so I imagine things will be better maintained. For my own part, I've only just figured out how to update the Archive, so the Cardinal Classic set has been posted. There isn't a link (yet) on the main page, but here's a direct URL: http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/archive/CCXVII/

Ryan Westbrook wrote:Ideally, what you should do is just get a comprehensive collection of packets on your hard drive and search that (whether by Google Desktop or other method) - easier said than done, sure. It'd be perfectly easy if/when anyone ever gets a reasonably comprehensive collection of, let's say, all good post-2003 packets up in one spot.

Seconded. Jason and I are working on new ways to tackle packet archiving. Jason's currently testing a new user interface for the Stanford Archive that easily allows you to browse by year, and I'm starting to work on a question database similar to what Jerry's been doing. Having your own archive offline is probably the best solution for now, though. Comes in handy for long plane rides to Boston or something.

BuzzerZen wrote:Or, if you're really cool, convert all your Word Docs to plain text using antiword, then grep them (or ack them or rak them).

Well, we could move away from proprietary, closed formats and have machine readable formatting that would allow for easy, instantaneous shuffling, searching, categorization, and the like. Jerry's question database would no longer require human preprocessing, stats could be correlated with specific questions easily, etc.

Another good thing to search would be goodpackets.zip, which I think you can get at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/goodpackets.zip. Most of the search methods described here would allow you to search that particular archive once you've unzipped it. Additionally, if you're thinking of a certain tournament but can't seem to find it, several of us have very comprehensive packet archives, and you are certainly welcome to email me and ask whether I've got that particular set. If I do, I'll be happy to share it.

BuzzerZen wrote:Or, if you're really cool, convert all your Word Docs to plain text using antiword, then grep them (or ack them or rak them).

Well, we could move away from proprietary, closed formats and have machine readable formatting that would allow for easy, instantaneous shuffling, searching, categorization, and the like. Jerry's question database would no longer require human preprocessing, stats could be correlated with specific questions easily, etc.

While there's nothing I'd like to see more than every packet submitted in properly formatted plain text, I do understand that people like Jordan, Evan, and myself are in the minority when it comes to this issue. Therefore, I'll just reiterate my plea to format your packets properly as per the ACF guidelines. This makes it easier on all of us.

grapesmoker wrote:I do understand that people like Jordan, Evan, and myself are in the minority when it comes to this issue. Therefore, I'll just reiterate my plea to format your packets properly as per the ACF guidelines. This makes it easier on all of us.

True, true. I'm just hoping that if I hop on the soapbox every time somebody says "why can't we do X" that is the fault of using hard to parse formats, maybe alternatives will catch on.